This article is written by Sudhir, a fellow enthusiast of Hindi movie music and a contributor to this blog. This article is meant to be posted in atulsongaday.me. If this article appears in sites like lyricstrans.com and ibollywoodsongs.com etc then it is piracy of the copyright content of atulsongaday.me and is a punishable offence under the existing laws.

Now this song today has a very interesting peculiarity, that was brought to our group’s notice by Bakshish Singh ji. I will come that shortly.

Today’s song, another vintage Chitragupt creation, which has remained kind of obscure and unfamiliar to the listening public. In its time, the music of this film was quite popular on the radio, especially the Mukesh song “Babam Babam Bam Bam Lehri” and the Kamal Barot song “Suna Hai Jabse Mausam Hai Pyaar Ke Kaabil”. The song presented in this post was also heard on the radio, but now it has been unheard for a long time.

Ramu Dada is a film by Sheikh Mukhtar. It is directed by Adarsh for the banner of Adarshlok, Bombay. The main star cast is listed as Sheikh Mukhtar, Jaimala, Prince Saleem, Honey Irani, Sapru, Nilofer, Rajan Haksar, Jagdish Shrivastav and Chand Usmani etc. In this, the name Prince Saleem is the same person as Salim Khan that we are more familiar with – part of the Salim-Javed team of story writers (‘Sholay’ (1975) et al.), father of actor Salman Khan.

Geet Kosh lists 9 songs of this film. Three of these are already showcased on our blog. This post brings on board the fourth song of this film. All the songs are penned by Majrooh Sb and the music is composed by Chitragupt. In this song, Rafi Sb’s voice is accompanied by the voice of Lata ji. On screen, this song is performed by Salim Khan and Jaimala.

Now coming to the interesting peculiarity of this song. This song is one of those that has a slight variation in between the audio and video versions; or in other words, in between the 78 rpm recording and the recording actually filmed. Readers will recall that I discussed another such song earlier in the year – “Rangeen Bahaaron Se Hai Gulzaar China Town” from the 1962 film ‘Chinatown’. This song has a similar peculiarity. The verses noted in the lyrics section below are based on the audio version of this song, taken from the 78 rpm record. That version also supplies the title line for this post, and that is because the Geet Kosh takes this as the original wording for listing. The lines of the mukhda of this song has been modified in the video version.

Please listen to the mukhda rendition in the two versions. When we listen to the audio version, it sounds very normal and correct, nothing is amiss. However, when we listen to the video version, the lines of the mukhda rendition sound somewhat altered and out of sync with the music. The most likely explanation is that these lines have been overlaid on to an earlier version of this song. Meaning that the song was filmed with the version that is present on the 78 rpm records. Then for some reason (unknown at this time), the mukhda lines were re-recorded with the sight variation in words, and then this recording was carefully dubbed onto the existing celluloid reels. However, the dubbing is not perfect. We can clearly make out a slight variation in the pace of music for these lines. And careful examination will also show that the lip sync for the mukhda lines is out of sync.

Having established this variation, however I have not been able to locate any information as to why this change was made, why was this change was so essential and necessary. I request friends and readers to add more information regarding the why of this change.